We are nearing a crossroads for Kieran McGeeney as Armagh manager. No one in gaelic football doubts McGeeney's ability as a footballer or a leader. His abilities as a manager have been questioned though, in the last twelve months, following Armagh's meek dismissal from the championship last summer and their relegation to Division Three of the National League two weeks ago. Joe Brolly has been one of the people asking those questions.
Brolly has been espousing a theory about why Armagh have been so average under McGeeney and he's been elaborating on it in the Sunday Independent and Newstalk. It amounts to this: McGeeney sees the current batch of Armagh players and thinks they are shit. And how does somebody - especially one of the greatest footballers of the last thirty years - coach shit?
In today's Irish News, retired Armagh footballer Finian Moriarity, who had the pleasure of playing with and under Geezer in orange poured scorn on Brolly for calling Armagh 'shit' in recent times.
“For someone who says he wants to promote the game and all that is good about the GAA in general, isn't it misplaced of Joe to suggest that a group of inter-county players are shit," he wrote in the Irish News this week. He added:
“How does that make the players feel? What impact would that have on the families of those players?”
“Armagh have unquestionably under-performed in some of the situations Joe notes in his article, but in 2014 Kieran had a huge role in reversing the fortunes of the previous season and improving Armagh's style of play.
We wonder what Paul Grimley might say about that.
